On Wednesday 20 July 2005 07:44, Milan Babuskov wrote:

> Helen Borrie wrote:
> >>Which Linux versions are supported by Firebird?
> >
> > Theoretically, all.  Practically, if you are something of a bunny with
> > Linux, stick with a distro that supports rpm installers - Red
> > Hat/Fedora, Mandrake/Mandriva, SuSe, amongst several others.
>
> I hate to admit, but this is really true. You can also run Firebird on
> Slackware without much problems (installer spits some errors, but
> everything works). It should also work on Gentoo without much hassle,
> but Gentoo is definitely not for beginners (some may argue the same for
> Slackware too).
>
> > My personal preference is
> > Mandriva, not because of Firebird, but because it is just very, very
> > good at recognising and configuring your hardware.  That doesn't mean
> > all of the others do it badly, just that Mandriva "just works", no
> > hassles.  The Mandriva folk are also making the effort to include
> > Firebird in their distros.
>
> True. From top three .rpm based distributions I give Mandriva the
> advantage, especially if you are a beginner (RedHat and SuSE being the
> second). Newer versions (SuSE 9.3 and Fedora 4) seem to be very stable
> and work nice, but still.

True, a distro with package management will give you a faster start, but you
will eventually regret that, when you need/want to do upgrades/security
fixes. Gentoo/Debian/*BSD all have package managemnt tools which can resolve
package dependencies.

Personally, I am a Gentoo guy, and although this kind of system starts in a
more bare-bone form, it also provides great flexibility, and is an excellent
learning exercise. It is important to know something about security and
networking, even if these tasks are dealt with by someone else in your
company.

So, you have a tradeoff. You can either have a short set-up time and get the
ball rolling with firebird (and possibly regretting going into rpm-hell
later), or go slower, learning bits and pieces about other things along the
way, and getting to know your system really well.

>
> > Debian has a following here, as well.  My own experience with Debian is
> > that it doesn't work "out of the box" (it's not designed to) and uses a
> > totally different packaging scheme than the mainline Linuxen do.  That
> > shouldn't be a problem for you if you are already well-acquainted with
> > Debian but I'd suggest that it wouldn't be the best starting point if
> > you are new to both Linux and Firebird.
>
> This sentence explains about all. Debian takes more time to learn,
> although it can pay off in the long run. If you could take some time to
> first to learn Debian and then use Firebird on it, it may also turn out
> alright. There are also many Debian-based distributions around, with
> Ubuntu being extremely popular. However, most of them target desktop,
> not the server, so I don't recommend it.
>
> BTW, if you plan to run Firebird on an older machine (Pentium 2 or
> older), then Slackware might be the best choice. You won't be able to
> run latest versions of SuSE, Mdr or RH smoothly, but Slackware would
> just fly (I even have few 486 boxes running FB 1.0).
>
> To sum up: if you have modern hardware, the best thing is to try out at
> least 3 distributions and see whichever suits you best. The one you find
> easiest to setup and maintain is The Best for you. It takes time to
> learn Linux, so in few years you'll test some distros again and only
> then you'll be able to pick The Right One(tm).
>
> --
> Milan Babuskov
> http://fbexport.sourceforge.net
> http://www.flamerobin.org
>
>
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